[wip] ALLEN Design Portfolio 2022

S. ALLEN

UNDERGRADUATE PORTFOLIO - 2022 - A COLLECTION OF WORKS

My first semester Freshman year, I lived across the dorm hall from a fellow student, Computer Scientist.

I recall one instance in particular when we sat on the floor, he queried, “why is pi the number it is?” At first we looked at him with the strangest faces humanity has ever seen. But he asked again “why are their some constants that just ‘are the way they are’?”

From then on we would have frequent talks similar to this one. How such simple ideas under a curious lens can become the most complicated ones. Discussions that target the fundamentals of humanity.

My ideas are everchanging, but if anyone, architects have the power to challenge questions like these. We may not know the ‘hows’, or ‘whys’, but nonetheless, can use them. We wield shapes, spaces, and journeys, and we always do it for the betterment of our world.

PROJECTS

INSTRUCTOR: Self

COURSE: Misc.

TYPE: Individual YEAR: F 2022

HOLISTIC WORKS

INTEGRAL

00The following is a collection of personal creative work that exemplifies my interdisciplinary style. Through many media an understanding of my comprehensive style and design attitudes begins to emerge.

I am a strong believer in the serious play of creative disciplines. Innovation, creativity and a unique way of looking at the world add up to beautiful design. Experimentation and failure is often as important as definition and success. But we only can do so by testing, imitating and adapting with our own views of design

The totality of one’s creations is who they are as a designer and thus, a critical thinker.

In my other works I’m particularly encapsulated by the marks left behind by something that is no longer there, the movement of something still, and the stories that haven’t been told yet.

Painting discovering material through its textural pattern print.

INSTRUCTOR: Aaron Amosson

COURSE: Studio 01 TYPE: Individual YEAR: F 2020

JOURNEY

01This project was conducted using a series of repeating manipulations and intuitive motions to a single sheet of 3 by 9 cardstock. Iteration in tandem with intuition gave us an artifact with a spatial reading beyond that of the original paper. In this case tactile modeling methodology was more important than any higher order thought defending such actions.

The paper then took mass from 2 dimensions to 3. It was composed of elements with depth and varying level of “solid”.

After creating these forms, re-reading them with particular notice of movement and “rooms” being created, I discovered a narrative that allowed me to further push the ideas.

The form was ripe for a museum allowing our character ‘an artist’ to explore the furthest reaches of their mind. The rough forms framed views, places, and the artist themselves as a part of the ever extensive landscape surrounding.

In this series I made discoveries about the most basic architectural elements: tectonics of sticks, planes and masses and guiding principles of storytelling .

Sticks, Planes and Masses; the objects combined to create depth model.

Analogies of form brought forward into depth model.

These cuts are based re-reading the narrative of a visitor. Changing the architecture through story.

INSTRUCTOR: Gabriel Cuellar

COURSE: Studio 04

COLLABORATOR: Shane Herb YEAR: S 2022

ENVIRONMENTAL INSTALLATION

HEALING

Beaver River is impaired. Found in northeastern Minnesota Beaver River is a filter to and tributary of Lake Superior. The natural beauty would never have an explorer assume that a fundamental element of the ecosystem is suffering from man-made problems.

In this project we proposed how to change Minnesota’s urban fabric through the lens of water bodies and property.

Cliff Co.’s Northshore mining has led to serious issues hindering Beaver River to function as it once did. A waste pond gouges the landscape where leftover mining scraps are kept until they are settled into a sludge. All the while seeping into the surrounding Beaver River.

The project Healing lives as a new sense of community . Currently privatization dominates the territory leading to an noncooperative approach to land revitalization.

Identifying and using public lands to give ownership back to the residents reverses this status quo. With simple soil erosion mitigation and gradual reclamation of the tailings pond, a healing trail brings shared responsibility and hope in beautiful moments of exploration.

The public versus private property ownership of Lake Superior South; Beaver River’s home watershed.

Northshore’s mining pond sitting larger than the entire town of Silver Bay. Repurpose through reclamation.

Using the Beaver River Hiking Trail to educate locals and visitors about the landscape.

USERS

INSTRUCTOR: Gayla Lindt

COURSE: Studio 03

TYPE: Individual YEAR: F 2021

Situated between the University of Minnesota Transit way and the bustling University Avenue in Minneapolis, MN. The Malcolm Cheesemaking Station efficiently filters people and goods while allowing interaction and exploration of the intricacies in the cheesemaking process.

By trying to accommodate so many user groups, the architecture had become useless to all. The Malcolm Cheesemaking Station recognizes this and integrates people at an individual level into the cheesemaking process, dividing the potential users into three distinct groups.

The Passers use this architecture as purely a station. The Seekers come to learn about the intricacies of cheesemaking. The Composers are UMN students and local talent keeping artisan cheesemaking alive.

The architecture is a vessel for those inside of it.

Leveraging a niche that was missing in these vastly different realms of life allows a place of community to form. Where all communities can become one.

Users as a series of groups, all functioning within the same space.

Necessary programs identified and regions formed in the noting of exchanges and sizes between.

Users split by floor, inhabiting the same building for different purposes.

INSTRUCTOR: Patrick Lynch

COURSE: Studio 05

TYPE: Individual YEAR: F 2022

DIGITAL COMPLACENCY

YEILD

Our site for yield in a modest city, Otley, Iowa. A small unincorporated town is surrounded by corn industry.

This is where the John Deere house of the future sits; sold to farmers as equipment to profit off infertile land, sold to families as a house to streamline your life all while John Deere is making the real profit. A vast database of human habits.

Operating in a far speculative realm that accepts accelerations of current conditions as reality . The exploration of John Deere’s house of the future architecture allows us to take a closer look at ourselves.

Forming attitudes about the unfertile land and its potential uses as all the ‘leftovers’.

Out of sight out of mind outwardly pointed architecture, avoiding reality.

Saylor Allen

University of Minnesota BS Arch. alle1322@umn.edu (608) 698 5547